Opportunity gaps: Curricular discontinuities across ESL, mainstream, and college English

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Citation: Gilliland, B. (2017). Opportunity gaps: Curricular discontinuities across ESL, mainstream, and college English. In C. Ortmeier-Hooper & T. Ruecker (Eds.) Resident Multilingual and Linguistic Minority Writers: Transitions and Disruptions Across High Schools, Bridge Programs, and Colleges (pp. 2135). New York: Routledge

Opportunity Gaps: Curricular Discontinuities across ESL, Mainstream, and College English Betsy Gilliland, University of Hawaiʻi, Mānoa

Introduction Young writers most in need of consistent language-focused instruction may receive the least consistent support in building their writing proficiency (Menken, 2008). Developing writers need curricular continuity within and across programs and grade levels (Addison & McGee, 2010). While fluent English speakers may progress steadily through a school district’s programs, multilinguali youth in the same district may experience disruptive discontinuities in their educational trajectories when curricular programs do not bridge language development and mainstream English. This chapter highlights discontinuities of one high school’s English as a second language (ESL)ii and English language arts (ELA) writing curricula from the perspectives of multilingual adolescents transitioning from ESL to ELA and college composition. A lack of alignment across programs denied multilingual students opportunities to learn how to write for academic purposes. After reviewing research that found similar discontinuities, I report findings from a yearlong ethnographic study at one California high school, analyzing the writing curriculum for conflicting conceptions of literacy within and across academic programs.

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Limited Opportunities to Learn

Research with multilingual youth in American secondary schools has documented gaps in writing curriculum and instruction between ESL and mainstream classes as well as between high school and college. These gaps limit students’ opportunities to learn essential academic literacy practices. For example, writing in classes for English learners may focus on vocabulary memorization over conceptual understanding (Richardson Bruna, Vann, & Perales Escudero, 2007) or controlled writing and copying from models (Hartman & Tarone, 1999; Valdés, 2001). Teacher support of multilingual writers can be similarly reductive, meeting assessment requirements at the expense of supporting learners’ long-term writing development (Gilliland, 2014; Ruecker, 2013; Villalva, 2006). Mainstream English classes may also constrain what is taught about writing, focusing on worksheets and mechanical tasks (Allison, 2009) with written work rarely exceeding a single page (Applebee & Langer, 2011). Official curriculum often emphasizes formulaic five-paragraph essays that value structure and correctness over message (Enright & Gilliland, 2011; Ortmeier-Hooper, 2013). Such a focus on “survival genres” can limit multilingual students’ opportunities to learn other genres or purposes for writing (OrtmeierHooper, 2013; Ruecker, 2013). Research has also observed ESL students transitioning to mainstream classes unprepared for the new academic expectations (Fu, 1995; Harklau, 1994).

In contrast with the limited scholarship on multilingual youths’ high school experiences, more research has documented their challenges in college writing (e.g., Kanno & Harklau, 2012; Roberge, Siegal, & Harklau, 2009), though little is still known about their transition between

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high school and college writing. Many students report being challenged with literacy assignments for which their high school English classes had not prepared them (Crosby, 2009). Ruecker (2013) found that multilingual students’ college instructors expected them to already have some previous experience with genres they had not written in high school. Kibler (2013) observed multilingual college students drawing on the limited strategies they had developed in high school, but struggling with writing in ways they had not previously learned.

To identify structural factors that contribute to multilingual high school students’ struggles transitioning across programs, this chapter analyzes how a lack of curricular alignment across courses led to differing conceptions of what writing was, and limited multilingual students’ opportunities to learn to write for success in mainstream and college courses.

Context and Participants

Data were collected during a yearlong (2009-10) ethnographic study of three classrooms at Willowdale High Schooliii (WHS) in central California, which served 1503 students in grades 9 to 12. Students were 55% Hispaniciv and 40% White (non Hispanic) from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds; 20% were classified as English learners (ELs) and another 20% considered “Fluent English Proficient.”v

I observed two sections of Transition to English (Transitions), a two-period, yearlong class for advanced proficiency EL designated students. Writing assignments were designed to prepare students for grade-level academic tasks and the state high school exit exam. Evelyn Chou’s

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section of Transitions had 15 students in 10th to 12th grades. All but three were Spanish speakers. Shawn Brown’s section had 32 ninth grade students, all Spanish speakers. In both classes, some students were recent immigrants, while others had lived in the US for many years or their entire lives. I also observed Chris Richards’ section of Senior Literature and Composition (which everyone at the school called Senior Lit), a mainstream English language arts course with 24 twelfth grade students, including some multilingual former ELs.

Methods As a participant observer, I took field notes and audio-recorded classroom talk on days focused on writing instruction. I collected student writing, course texts, and documents from curricular programs, and I interviewed the three teachers and 12 focal students at the end of each semester. I interviewed six focal students the following year, asking about their experiences transitioning from ESL to mainstream and college writing.

For this chapter, I focused analysis on data where participants called attention to physical (worksheets, textbooks, and other objects) or theoretical (personal beliefs and official messages about writing development) aspects of the curriculum. After inductive open coding, I refined categories to identify patterns related to participants’ understanding of and beliefs about curriculum (LeCompte & Schensul, 1999). These patterns, emerging from the data, indexed theoretical perspectives on writing instruction that underlay curricular materials and teachers’ implementation thereof. Analyses were triangulated among data sources.

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Theoretical Framework

I analyze the data from a New Literacy Studies (NLS) perspective (Street, 2012), focusing on the ideologies of writing instruction in the written and enacted curriculum. NLS argues that all literacy activity is inherently social and situated within specific contexts (Barton & Hamilton, 2000). Literacy instruction designed from an autonomous approach treats writing as neutral and universal, assuming that teaching basic skills such as grammar or formulaic writing should automatically generate higher cognitive learning (Street, 2012). In contrast, an ideological understanding recognizes that “engaging with literacy is always a social act imbued with power relations” (Street, 2012, p. 29); pedagogy must help students recognize how people use literacy to achieve sociopolitical goals.

Applying NLS specifically to writing instruction, Ivanič (2004) defines discourses of writing as “constellations of beliefs about writing, beliefs about learning to write, ways of talking about writing, and the sorts of approaches to teaching and assessment which are likely to be associated with these beliefs” (p. 224). In Ivanič’s framework (Table 1), the lowest discourse levels (Skills, Creativity, and Process) situate the construct of “writing” within an individual writer who deploys knowledge of patterns to create a text—an autonomous stance on literacy. The fourth level (Genre) recognizes that the text types created by writers are socially situated, but maintains an autonomous image of teachers passing information to students. The highest levels (Social Practices and Sociopolitical) recognize ideological and communicative purposes for writing, the sociopolitical nature of writing, and its role in writers’ identities and positioning.

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Table 1 Discourses of Writing (Ivanic, 2004; Street, 2012) Discourse

How writing

How writing is

Belief about

works

taught

literacy

Writer applies

Teacher gives

knowledge of

students skills

Role of writer

1. Skills Individual writer 2. Creativity

Autonomous acting alone

structures to

(grammar or

create text

formulas)

Writer includes

Teacher gives

3. Process

Autonomous to Individual writer

appropriate

students genre ideological,

4. Genre

follows social

characteristics of

knowledge, or

norms

a particular text

students identify

type

genre features

depending on instruction Writer uses 5. Social

Writer is an actor

Curriculum writing to

Practices

in social

fosters critical

Ideological

achieve a social 6. Sociopolitical

practices

literacy purpose

In this chapter, I use Ivanič’s (2004) framework to compare the curricular programs at WHS in order to identify students’ opportunities to learn writing practices necessary for success moving across grade levels and into college. I analyze the two high school courses (Transitions and Senior Lit) for the discourses of writing in their official curricula, focusing on ideological discontinuities within and across courses. I then examine reports from graduated focal students

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about their experiences in college writing and discontinuities with their high school learning.

Findings

Transitions: Conflicting Curricular Ideologies

In this section I analyze conflicting discourses of writing present in the official Transitions curriculum. The course covered both advanced English language development and mainstream ninth grade ELA curricula, as the school district considered ninth grade English foundational for college-prep English classes. This dual mandate led the district to include two commercial programs presenting conflicting discourses of writing, which created discontinuities within the course itself.

Almost all writing in the two Transitions classrooms related to the school district’s required Benchmark Assignments (BAs). Developed by a team of district English teachers, the BAs were intended “to ensure equal access to rigorous curricula” and to “drive instruction to the extent that it immediately informs the student and teacher what needs to be re-taught.”vi This curriculum laid out grading and assessment policies, specifying exactly when each of five essays should be taught, minimum scores for passing, and remediation policies for failing students. Each BA rubric assessed six to eight criteria (content and language conventions) on a four-point scale. Transitions teacher Mr. Brown explained that the district considered students’ passing BA essays more important than any other aspect of the curriculum; teachers whose students passed the BAs without remediation received praise.

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The BA essay prompts came from Writing Workshops in the ninth grade Holt textbook (Beers & Odell, 2003b), which portrays writing as a formulaic, linear process. The district explained that the prompts were “selected from the core curriculum that demonstrate student mastery of essential academic standards and curriculum”vii; these text types were also in the ninth and tenth grade state standards and tested on the high school exit exam. Prioritizing the quality of the final product, the BAs represented a skills discourse in which structure, accuracy, and correctness of the final text took prominence in assessment.

In addition to the BAs, the district also expected Transitions teachers to follow a writing curriculum from the WRITE Institute.viii While the text types in BA and WRITE were similar (including literary analysis and personal narrative), the two programs represented contrasting ideological stances on writing. Explicitly stating that it took a genre discourse, the WRITE curriculum provided photocopiable reading and writing activities for each unit, developing students’ personal connections to issues, analyzing genre-appropriate or theme-related texts, and writing an essay in that genre. In keeping with the genre discourse, the WRITE curriculum promoted identifying purposes for writing a particular genre and connecting the writing to students’ previous experiences. Ms. Chou explained that teachers were told at WRITE trainings to use 80% of the provided materials to fulfill the purpose of the program, which was designed to teach students how to analyze genres and engage in real world writing practices. With district requirements to implement two ideologically different writing programs, the Transitions teachers made choices about integrating the materials. The school district officially stated that they should teach both programs fully, but simultaneously implied that the BAs were

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more valuable because of their immediate connection to high stakes assessments. Both teachers focused on the skills discourse of the BAs, effectively negating the WRITE program’s genre discourse.

New to BAs and WRITE, Ms. Chou initially felt pressure to follow the district’s timeline and directives. Not understanding the purpose of many of the WRITE materials, however, she had students complete dozens of worksheets without making the connections to genre or social function as the program’s creators intended. She explained her confusion: “I don't quite get it either, but they're supposed to answer those questions in general about the book because that's supposed to help them come up with a sentence or two about the book. …The thing is, because this is part of the curriculum, I’m mandated that I need to use 80% of it. Some of these things, I look at them and I have a chart and,” she laughed in frustration, “I don't know.” As the school year progressed, Ms. Chou learned from other teachers that the district prioritized her students’ final scores on the BAs and would not check their participation in WRITE. In teaching the later BAs, she ignored most of the WRITE materials, using only a few worksheets that fit with her previous teaching.

Having served on the BA revision committee, Mr. Brown understood the district’s value on the BAs over WRITE. Aware of the district pressure to complete all the essays within a limited time frame, he dropped any pretense of teaching the WRITE materials and designed graphic organizers and other materials to expedite students’ completion of the BA writing tasks. He explained his decision: “Not using the actual WRITE, but the concepts. But part of it was

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because the WRITE essays didn't align with the [Benchmark] essays we needed to write for this class.”

The Transitions curriculum demonstrated internal discontinuities that limited students’ opportunities to learn academic writing. The BA and Holt materials shared an autonomous view of literacy as a set of skills that could be mastered in isolation from any real-world purpose. WRITE’s genre discourse and recognition of students as members of social communities conflicted with the literacy perspectives in the rest of the Transitions curriculum. By using the WRITE materials selectively, the teachers lost WRITE’s larger goal of engaging students in connecting writing assignments to their funds of knowledge and broader applications. The reduction of WRITE to a set of worksheets represents the teachers’ awareness of the school district’s prioritizing the final product of the BAs and their ideological misalignment with the underlying philosophy of WRITE. While these decisions reduced the curricular discontinuities within the Transitions curriculum, they created greater misalignment with the curriculum of the mainstream English language arts classes into which the Transitions students progressed.

Senior Lit: Independent Writing Processes

Although the internal discontinuities of the Transitions curriculum were absent from the mainstream Senior Lit class, discontinuities between Transitions and Senior Lit meant that multilingual students crossing from one class to the next were faced with unfamiliar messages about what counted as academic writing. In teaching Senior Lit, Mr. Richards balanced district expectations to address the California standards using the 12th grade Holt textbook (Beers &

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Odell, 2003a) with his own beliefs about what students should learn about writing as they progress from high school to college. He maintained a consistent process discourse in his class, focusing on text creation but rarely connecting those texts to purposes beyond the classroom.

The 12th grade Holt textbook (Beers & Odell, 2003a) was laid out similarly to its 9th grade counterpart, with excerpts from longer literary works grouped in units, each piece followed by comprehension and analysis questions. Unlike in Transitions, however, the school district allowed Senior Lit teachers to select readings and decide how to integrate writing into their classes. As a result, each section of Senior Lit had different writing assignments, taught and evaluated according to the teacher’s perspectives. Mr. Richards used the Holt book as prompts for brief writing he assigned as homework. To accompany the textbook excerpts from Beowulf, for example, he assigned three choices of topics, each in a different rhetorical mode: Short Essay topics Descriptive—p. 40—Description of the Mom Analysis—p. 40—Analyzing the MonsteràGrendel (use quotations) Compare/Contrast—Write an essay in which you compare/contrast a modern day hero with Beowulf. You must establish a definition for “epic hero” as well as what we, as a society, currently view as a hero. Don’t forget the differences! These prompts, two from the textbook and the third created by the teacher, maintain an autonomous view of literacy. While Mr. Richards provided class time for students to talk with each other about how they defined the concept hero, they wrote individually for the teacher as reader. Taking a process discourse not present in the textbook prompts, Mr. Richards asked students to bring drafts for peer review and revise based on peer feedback. These sessions nevertheless reinforced an ideology of writing as politically neutral, where textual patterns and

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grammatical accuracy were central. Figure 1 is the Peer Response sheet Mr. Richards gave students for this assignment.

Figure 1. Mr. Richards’ Peer Response Sheet

Mr. Richards further developed a process discourse in Senior Lit through the Senior Project, a research-based expository paper he had developed in response to a state standard (“Write historical investigation reports.”). He set due dates for students to write a proposal, document notes and sources, and then outline, write, revise, and orally present the 8-page paper.

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Assignment guidelines focused on topic recommendations, due dates, and source requirements. This project, like other writing in Senior Lit, emphasized content, structure, and procedure over students’ purposes for writing or the text’s social functions. Mr. Richards dedicated many class days to this project, including time for students to do online research and instruction in outlining, but throughout the assignment, he treated students’ projects as isolated assessments written for him as the sole reader, rather than as texts serving communicative purposes. Without connections to either the text’s functions beyond this particular class or the social role of research-based writing, Mr. Richards’ students missed an opportunity to learn how these literacy skills might be transferred to their post-high school activities.

Espousing a process discourse, Mr. Richards showed students that he valued both final products and writing processes. More problematic for multilingual students in his class, however, was his belief that the seniors already understood writing from this perspective and were able to employ processes independently. He enumerated criteria he considered essential to good writing: “They need to know how to cite, and paragraph development. They're going to need the usual, the topic sentences, the evidence, the data, kind of the explanation, the warrants—any sense of that's how you're developing a paragraph.” These factors reflect foundational writing skills and academic language he thought seniors already had.

Mr. Richards’ instruction, therefore, emphasized new skills students needed for college. As he told his class, this included a focus on accuracy of citations and language: You guys have done some research papers in the past, but, it looks like works cited was, you didn't quite get it yet. And it's something that when you go to college, they're gonna

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expect that you know how to do this. To be prepared for unknown college writing instructors, he suggested, the students needed to develop more advanced skills than their high school teachers had required. Mr. Richards positioned Senior Lit as their last chance to learn before entering this critical and unforgiving new world. This stance reflects a greater awareness of the ideological nature of writing than the written curriculum suggested, acknowledging that student writers would face power imbalances based on their ability to create texts to meet various readers’ expectations.

Discontinuities from Transitions to Senior Lit

The official WHS curriculum assumed a coherent development of writing skills from the 9th grade BAs (used in Transitions) to Senior Lit, preparing all graduates for college writing. In reality, Transitions and Senior Lit served different purposes in the overall curriculum. Transitions was both a capstone of the ESL program for students who were still learning English, and entry to the accountability routines of mainstream English language arts classes and the high school exit exam. Senior Lit, in contrast, specifically intended to “prepare students for college English courses.”ix As the above analyses show, the classes do reflect their course descriptions. The problem lies in the gap between the two, specifically in students’ opportunities to learn the writing practices needed for success at higher levels.

The academic writing practices emphasized in Senior Lit diverged widely from those of Transitions, particularly with respect to expectations of students’ independence as writers. In Senior Lit, students still wrote for purposes determined by the teacher, but some assignments

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could also serve as college or scholarship application essays. In keeping with a process discourse, students had choice of both form and topic for their writing. More significantly, they wrote independently, writing and revising their texts with limited feedback from the teacher. Through a skills discourse curriculum, Transitions students, in contrast, learned that what mattered was the correctness of the final product; they had little opportunity to learn the processes of creating that product. This gap between discourses of writing in Transitions and Senior Lit interfered with students’ movement into mainstream classes.

Mr. Richards was not the only WHS English teacher to assume multilingual students were familiar with writing processes. After Ms. Chou’s Transitions class his junior year, focal student Ivan explained his experience in Senior English with another teacher: …the teacher just gave us topics and walk us through. You know she just assumed that everybody was at the same level and I was not, so I have to went to the learning center to get [help], and I didn't want to say nothing because, it seemed like I was the only one, so for some reason, I didn't want to. Here, Ivan commented on his Senior English teacher’s expectations about students’ equal preparation for writing at the level of the curriculum. Ivan also named another pattern I noted in Mr. Richards’ classroom with respect to multilingual seniors: in the teacher’s assumption of students’ readiness, those who did not feel capable were isolated and ashamed to ask for help.

Ivan’s classmate Orlando reported a similar experience moving from Transitions to mainstream classes with other teachers. His Senior Lit teacher told the class he was holding them to college standards. Orlando said that he and his classmates were shocked by how much this teacher

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expected the seniors to do independently, including submitting written assignments online mere hours after class, and by how much proficiency with academic language the teacher believed his students already possessed.

College Composition: Different Emphases

I followed up with the graduated focal students after their first semester of college for their perspectives on whether WHS English classes had prepared them for college writing. They perceived discontinuities between their high school classes and the expectations of their college writing classes.

Placing into developmental writing courses at community college gave two students from Ms. Chou’s Transitions class opportunities to learn academic writing practices they had not seen earlier. While the instruction they described still reflects lower level discourses of writing, the students also felt that their high school instruction was misaligned with what they needed to succeed in college. For example, Ivan reflected on two semesters of developmental college writing, listing aspects such as transition words, outlining, and capitalization, using specialized terminology to label the various topics he now knew he had not previously learned: Some vocabulary, sentence structure. I learned a lot of that, see Miss Chou never teaches that. It has like independent and dependent. They never, that's the funny thing, how come I never seen. Or I never put attention, it was me, or something, cause, I never saw that in high school!

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Ivan felt he should have learned more foundational writing skills during his junior and senior years. His college writing instructor had given him the language to talk about writing, an essential move towards making connections between texts and their social purposes.

Ivan’s classmate Javier had fewer concerns about how Transitions had prepared him for college writing. He noted that in high school ESL classes, he had learned how to “write much, show in details,” particularly through summaries and vocabulary development. Nevertheless, Javier felt that extensive writing in his high school Advanced Placement Spanish classes had helped him improve his writing more than English class assignments had and thought that WHS’s English teachers should assign more essays. From the students’ descriptions, it seems that their developmental writing courses followed a skills discourse. Ivan’s list of grammatical structures and Javier’s comment about vocabulary suggest these young men had not seen a connection between their college writing classes and greater social purposes for writing.

Fatima, a focal student from Mr. Richards’ Senior Lit class, placed in a multilingual section of first-year composition with an additional one-unit support class at a local public university campus. She appreciated the additional feedback she received from her support class, where students had time to write and receive frequent responses to their FYC assignments. Fatima felt that she had learned much in high school that had prepared her for college writing, including outlining ideas before writing, a strategy Mr. Richards had reinforced in Senior Lit. She wished, however, that she had learned in high school to think about more sophisticated readers while writing: “In college, they want sort of academic audience, and it’s kind of different in high school. It’s just a high school audience, so like your word choice and stuff, it changes.” In this

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way she called out one of the ideological differences between WHS’s writing curriculum and the expectations of college writing: the intended audience.

Discontinuities from High School to College

The text types emphasized in the BAs and Holt textbooks included genres typical of college writing assignments, but the formulaic nature of the BA and the standardized high school exit exam fostered different writing processes and expectations. Ivan and Javier placed into much lower level writing courses in college than the high school’s course sequencing would have suggested: they went from writing full length essays in high school to focusing on paragraphs in their college classes. As both young men noted, however, they were learning language and writing skills they had not covered at WHS. Compared to the Transitions and Senior English tasks, Mr. Richards’ Senior Lit assignments were closer to the expectations for writing process and quality that his students experienced when they got to college. As Fatima pointed out, however, college writing also required students to engage with different audiences, a move towards a social practices discourse of writing.

Discussion

This chapter has examined ideological discontinuities in how writing was viewed and taught for multilingual learners at Willowdale High School. Students in the Transitions course experienced an internally misaligned curriculum, where the skills discourse BAs took precedence over the genre discourse of WRITE because of school district emphasis on the BAs. Moving into

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mainstream English language arts courses, including Senior Lit, the students encountered teachers who assumed they had mastered basic skills and could engage with a process discourse curriculum independently. Progressing to college, students discovered further discontinuities, placing into developmental courses that addressed skills they had not learned in high school and first year composition courses that asked them to consider writing as communication with new audiences.

These curricular misalignments at each step of students’ trajectories indicate that they missed opportunities to learn essential writing practices as they moved across programs. A New Literacies Studies perspective allows consideration of the messages that each curricular program sends about what counts as literacy and identification of fundamental differences that contribute to the discontinuities limiting multilingual writers’ opportunities to learn. As the Transitions class illustrated, discontinuities within a course meant that the teachers were tasked with finding a balance. In the case documented here, the teachers’ options were influenced by the school district’s assessment policies prioritizing the skills discourse BAs over the genre discourse WRITE. Although these decisions smoothed the instructional process within Transitions, they broadened the gap between this course and subsequent mainstream courses. Senior Lit, like other upper grade English classes at WHS, had fewer institutional requirements, allowing individual teachers like Mr. Richards to establish what counted as writing. The process discourse of these classes challenged multilingual students who had previously not been expected to engage independently with writing. Neither Transitions nor Senior Lit, however, gave multilingual writers opportunities to learn all they needed college writing.

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While many WHS students likely struggled with these same discontinuities, they posed an even greater challenge for the multilingual students in this study. Because they were newer to the discourses of high school English language arts, having spent much of their academic careers in ESL courses, multilingual students had to learn new ways of participating in writing class as they crossed boundaries (from Transitions to Senior Lit and from high school to college). At each transition, what their teachers shared about writing and reasons for writing changed. Students recognized these gaps and felt their teachers at earlier levels should have taught what they needed to know for the higher-level classes. The focal students interviewed in this chapter, however, are those who succeeded at making these transitions; Mr. Richards told me that many multilingual students at WHS dropped out before their senior year. These curricular discontinuities may have posed even greater barriers to multilingual students with academic ambition but without the persistence that allowed students like Ivan to succeed.

Implications of this study highlight a need for coherence in writing curriculum across programs both within a school and beyond. When ideologies behind curricular programs conflict with each other, approaches to teaching writing do not align. Large-scale curricular decisions must happen at the district level, where textbook packages are selected and supplemental programs purchased. Decision makers need to recognize that not all students in their schools move in a clear progression across mainstream classes—multilingual learners in particular may jump tracks from ESL to mainstream, and like some of my focal students, from an ESL class using the 9th grade textbook to a mainstream class using the 12th grade textbook. Thus even a textbook series with a clear progression from one grade to the next is not enough. Ideally, district curriculum planners will also be able to communicate with college faculty, sharing knowledge and planning “a

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vertical curriculum that begins in high school, continues through college, and specifically fosters transfer across contexts” (Addison & McGee, 2010, p. 170).

Most importantly, teachers are essential to developing and maintaining curricular coherence for multilingual learners. They need time and institutional encouragement to communicate with each other across curricular tracks about both what is taught in lower and higher-grade courses and how it is taught, including what discourses of writing are behind the curriculum. As Mr. Richards did to some extent, teachers can individually give their students access to social and ideological perspectives on writing. Teachers need to get to know their students’ linguistic and academic trajectories, recognizing that while they may have “covered” a set of text types in one course, they may not have learned how those text types are connected to writing beyond the classroom or how they can apply their knowledge of those text types in later writing assignments. As the people closest to the application of curriculum into practice, teachers should play a role in the redesign of curricular articulation. Multilingual students can only benefit when their schools and their teachers invest in smoothing their transitions across grade levels and programs.

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Ruecker, T. (2013). High-stakes testing and Latina/o students: Creating a hierarchy of college readiness. Journal of Hispanic Higher Education, 12(4), 303-320. doi: 10.1177/1538192713493011 Street, B. (2012). New literacy studies. In M. Grenfell, D. Bloome, C. Hardy, K. Pahl, J. Rowsell & B. Street (Eds.), Language, ethnography, and education: Bridging new literacy studies and Bourdieu (pp. 27-49). New York: Routledge. Valdés, G. (2001). Learning and not learning English: Latino students in American schools. New York: Teachers College Press. Villalva, K. E. (2006). Reforming high school writing: Opportunities and constraints for generation 1.5 writers. In P. K. Matsuda, C. Ortmeier-Hooper & X. You (Eds.), The politics of second language writing (pp. 30-55). West Lafayette, IN: Parlor Press.

i Multilingual students refers to participants in my study and others like them, young people who

use more than one language in their lives. Multilingual students may be classified by the school as English language learners, but others are officially redesignated as fluent English users or were never classified as such. ii California uses ELD (English language development), not ESL (English as a second language), for

school-level classes. I use ESL here to keep with terminology in the research literature. iii All names of people and places are pseudonyms. iv California uses “Hispanic” in reporting demographics to include students of any race who report

being “Hispanic” or “Latino” as ethnicity. It does not imply anything about language.

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v In California “Fluent English Proficient” refers to students “whose primary language is other than

English and who have met the district criteria for determining proficiency in English” (http://www.cde.ca.gov/ds/sd/cb/glossary.asp#f, accessed September 10, 2014). vi WHS accreditation report, 2010. vii WHS accreditation report, 2010. viii The WRITE Institute (Writing Reform Institute for Teaching Excellence:

https://writeinstitute.sdcoe.net/) curriculum promotes teacher professional development to support English Language Learners’ academic writing and language learning. ix WHS Course Catalog, 2009-2010.